Penguin keeper Jane Tollini has been trying to talk her 52 penguins back onto Penguin Island since last month. The penguins started a mock migration beginning December 24th with the introduction of 6 penguins from SeaWorld Ohio. Within hours the "6' convinced 46 (all) of SF Zoo's peguins to migrate. From Argentina to Brazil and back is 2000 miles. This trip should end in February with breeding season. (PHOTOGRAPHED BY LIZ HAFALIA/THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE)

Photo: LIZ HAFALIA

Penguin keeper Jane Tollini has been trying to talk her 52 penguins...

Brainwashed by six newcomers from Ohio, 46 penguins at the San Francisco Zoo have abandoned their burrows and embarked on a great migration --

except their pool is not exactly the coast of South America and there's really nowhere for them to go.

"We've lost complete control," said Jane Tollini, their mystified keeper. "It's a free-for-all in here. After 18 years of doing this job, these birds are making mincemeat of me."

They've all been swimming since Christmas Eve, whirling around the pool like tuxedos in a washing machine. No one knows why they started or when they'll stop. All they know is that the zoo's Penguin Island has turned into a very chaotic place.

"Round and round they go," Tollini said. "They almost make me dizzy."

In early 2000, Sea World in Aurora, Ohio, was sold, and its Magellanic penguins, accustomed to swimming all winter, were shipped to Sea World in San Diego. Half a dozen of them moved to San Francisco in November, and they met their new colleagues 3 1/2 weeks ago.

Since then, nothing has been the same.

Within two hours, the three males and three females from Ohio -- smaller and more docile than their mean and hefty San Francisco counterparts -- had convinced the 46 to jump in the pool with them. Now they swim most of the day and stagger out only at dusk.

"This is so bizarre, I don't know how to even explain it," said Tollini on a recent morning, gazing at their empty homes. "Normally every burrow would be occupied by pairs. This is their down time. Before, it took a grenade to get them out."

Of the 160 Magellanic penguins in 11 U.S. zoos and aquariums, the San Francisco group is the largest and the best at breeding -- 148 babies since the first penguins showed up in spring 1984.

Even though they all look alike, at least to a casual observer, Tollini has given each penguin a name, can tell them apart and knows who their mates are. Couples include Pearl and Bluto, Grumpy and Shamu, and Captain and Ditz. Tollini will tell you that Bette Davis is a "real housewife" who likes to stay home and that Joan Collins "has done the whole colony" at one time or another.

What she can't tell you is why her birds won't get out of the water -- especially the "geezers" and "old ladies" she suspects are getting pretty tired by now.

One is a humpback, some have bone spurs, and nine of the original penguins, back in the early '80s, made a real migration along the coast of South America -- putting in six months and 2,000 miles.

"Now they're thinking, 'Didn't we just see that palm tree?' " Tollini said. "Some of them haven't swum this much in five years."

CODDLED FLOCK

The San Francisco penguins have always been a coddled bunch. Tollini hand- feeds them, catering to their preferences. Some like to grab the smelt or herring, others want it shoved down their gullets, and yet others opt for room service in their burrows.

Hand-feeding allows the zoo staff to monitor their health twice a day, to protect them from sea gulls and to medicate them when needed.

"It's natural for this colony to do what comes unnaturally," Tollini said.

The penguins normally retreat to their burrows on Nov. 1. They groom, preen,

decorate their homes with palm fronds and pampas grass, and steal each other's nesting material.

In mid-February, they emerge. The first eggs appear in early April and they hatch around 40 days later.

Now, of course, all bets are off. No one knows when this mysterious migration will stop.

Meanwhile, Tollini said, "It is hell feeding them."

The San Francisco penguins are inept at aquatic dining, and their Ohio brethren never had to deal with sea gulls jumping on their heads.

Some penguins are thinner, Tollini said, since they "eat less than they would if they were sitting on their asses." It's harder to give them medicine. When they're on Penguin Island, they're nervous wrecks. And when their pool is drained on Thursdays, she said, they're all bug-eyed and they bump into each other like pinballs.

"I can't figure out how the Aurora penguins communicated and changed the minds of the other 46," said Tollini, who doesn't want to simply remove the gang of six. "I don't experiment on my birds."

Other penguin experts don't know what to make of the swimming frenzy.

"Penguins are extraordinarily social birds," said Christina Slager, associate curator at Monterey Bay Aquarium, who studied Magellanics in the wild in Patagonia and Chile. "And they're very, very inquisitive. If you combine those facts and put in a new stimulus, like the six new penguins, they have to check it out."

"Genetically, they're designed to swim," Schaller said. "I'd be more amazed if the six had learned to do something not in penguin nature and showed the other 46 how to do it -- like if the birds were trained to jump through a hoop. "

Ken Ramirez, director of training and husbandry at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, mused that a natural instinct had been activated.

"Something kicks in and animals get in a pattern," he said. "Penguins are flock birds. They do things as a group."

Whatever is causing it, Tollini just hopes it stops -- and soon.

She watched as a few birds stumbled onto Penguin Island for a brief cameo appearance.